WHERE THE WORKERS COME FROM. Family of German immigrants, passing through Ellis Island on their way to the Middle West. (Courtesy of U.S. Immigration Station, Ellis Island.)
CHAPTER VI
THE NEGRO CENSUS FROM THE SADDLE
Leaving New York the next day after his visit to the Immigration Station on Ellis Island, Hamilton stayed only a few hours in Washington to receive final instructions before proceeding to the southwestern part of Kentucky where his work as a population census-taker was to begin.
At the appointed place he found the supervisor awaiting him.
"I suppose you know," remarked his brother's friend, shaking hands, "that I've given you a fairly well scattered district to cover. You said you wanted to get a chance to see Kentucky as it really is, and this, together with your mountain experience, ought to give you variety enough."
"They told me in Washington that it was largely a negro district?" the boy said questioningly.
"It is about as much of a black district as any in Kentucky," was the reply, "but it isn't solid black by any means. Therein lies its interest. The negroes are of all varieties, from old-time slaves who have never left the plantation on which they were piccaninnies during the war, to progressive negroes owning fair-sized tracts of land, most of them still living in the one-room shacks that you see all over the country, but a few having bought what used to be the 'big house' in antebellum days."